The Dodgers’ Justin Turner celebrates after hitting a three-run walk-off home run during the ninth inning of Game 2 of the NLCS against the Cubs on Sunday night at Dodger Stadium. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

LOS ANGELES — In a year that has been so probable, the possible happened.

It happened Sunday night on the 29th anniversary of Kirk Gibson’s home run off Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the World Series, a blast that is framed by hundred off taillights, leaving Dodger Stadium in defeat, and a limping star straining to touch all the bases, grinning through what became his last hurrah.

This one was dramatic, sure, this three-run bomb by Justin Turner that flew the center-field fence and landed in a glove of a guy wearing a Chase Utley T-shirt.

It beat the Cubs in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series, 4-1, and gave the Dodgers a 2-0 series lead.

But Gibson’s home run was out of syrupy movies and teenage novels. What Turner did was utterly predictable.

The pitcher was John Lackey, a week shy of his 39th birthday, a decorated postseason soldier who was among baseball’s most hittable pitchers this season.

The moment was the bottom of the ninth with two men on and two out. Turner was right on time. Failure, at this point, would have been the surprise.

There have been other home runs just as thrilling, like Steve Finley’s pennant-winning grand slam in 2004, or Charlie Culberson’s home run that won the NL West last year and also sent Vin Scully home a winner in his valedictory home game

But it’s sort of pointless to rank walk-offs. They’re like Key West sunsets, spectacular to the last, and Turner’s blast was the appropriate release to a swelling balloon of an old-time playoff game.

“I was fairly excited,” Turner said. “I hit a ball pretty good to center field earlier in the game and (Albert) Almora is an unbelievable center fielder. He’s been taking hits away from us every time we play him. So I was just watching him, hoping he wasn’t going to catch it.”

“I was back here in the video room, getting ready for my next at-bat,” Austin Barnes said. “I heard this roar and then I looked at the TV. Fortunately there’s a delay so I was able to see it. Pretty incredible.”

“I was on first base,”said Chris Taylor, who had walked. ““All I know is that I saw it go out real fast.”

But this home run was actually born long ago, when Turner began the arduous, far-from-guaranteed process of turning himself into a power hitter.

That meant hitting baseballs by the millions, learning how to attack low with a swing path that refuses to give in to grounders, so out-of-fashion these days with shifted defenses and brilliant shortstops.

“It’s just a mindset,” Taylor said, “and he preaches it every day to us.”

It also began happening late Thursday night in Washington, when the Cubs put their fate in the hands of closer Wade Davis and asked him to get seven high-stress outs.

It took Davis 44 pitches to do that, and that was only three days ago. Manager Joe Maddon did not want to warm up Davis with no result, or throw him into a tie game and waste his efforts, considering what lies ahead.

Kenley Jansen, part of a bullpen that has not allowed a hit since the ninth inning of Game 3 of the NLDS last Monday, wore a T-shirt that said “Vote JT,” in honor of the campaign that sent Turner to the All-Star Game. Turner wore a 66 T-shirt in honor of Puig.

“I had to get it out of his locker,” Turner said. “I can still smell his cologne.”

Turner talked of Jansen’s wedding in Curacao last December, when the two were unsigned free agents. They discussed how much they enjoyed being Dodgers, how last year’s elimination at the hands of Chciago gnawed at them.

Turner was on the dance floor that night when he informed Jansen he was returning. Before that, they were in a room getting pre-wedding haircuts.

“And I did get a haircut,” Turner said, although he denied that he said he would shave his red mane if the Dodgers win it all.

Turner then flew to Aruba and was on the beach when he noticed, on Twitter, that Jansen had signed.

“That was a good mai tai for me right there,” Turner said.

They are the club’s leaders now. A hulking catcher who couldn’t hit enough to see a future, and a knockaround infielder trying to escape Triple-A for Baltimore, Cincinnati and the Mets.

Chalk all the money the Dodgers have donated to glamour free agents, and none of it could buy what these vagabonds have wrought.

But Turner is no longer improbable, and Dodger Stadium had no trouble believing what it just saw.

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